A crisp, clear morning greeted riders as I climbed out of my van at Craters of the Moon in Taupo on Sunday... It had been a long time since I had ridden here, and, like many of our working forests, recent harvesting had turned the area into something quite different to what I remembered. I rugged up in my new Endura jacket (lovely gear, by the way... but more on that later!) and headed to rego, handed over my twenty-five bucks and had a deep and meaningful conversation with the volunteers about how I would like to enter the open category as I was in denial of my "old fogey" status.
A quick warm up loop confirmed the tracks were running pretty fast, but the general consensus was that there was an apparent lack of any climbing of note. I've often had this debate with people who don't like climbing... That riding a trail that is devoid of climbs is actually much harder work, and today was no exception to this... We set off at race start and I punched out my first 12km lap in about 42 minutes... I was fast, but nowhere near fast enough to keep up with Fiona Macdermid. Open females were committed to 3 laps of the 12km course, which was quite long for a cross country race. The relative flatness of the course meant that I was on the hammer the whole time, and it showed in my data afterwards, where my average heart rate for the two hours sat within my anabolic threshold. But whilst the course was hard work, it was also great fun, and to be fair, it would not have done the course justice to ride it any slower. For the most part, we were negotiating our way through flowy corners and berms and floating over small flat top jumps. I worked hard, but I also had a great time, coming in second behind Fiona. For a trail that felt so flat, though, we still punched out a total of 750m of climbing!
I must admit that I enjoy cross country racing... Realistically, my endurance legs are probably not quite as fast as they need to be to stay up there with the best in the game, but it's interesting how much differently I can approach a shorter race, and then, throughout the course of the season, how long a "short" race becomes. For example, I was quite happy to ruin myself in this race because I knew it would be no more than a couple of hours, and in all honesty, it's kinda fun to have the opportunity to absolutely thrash myself as opposed to being required to push out a paced effort over time. Over the course of a season, a "short" race will go from being two hours long, to being four or five hours long. I find it fascinating how the body adapt to training efforts!
I was actually really stoked with my ride... I smashed out a hard, fast 36km, with an average speed of 17km/hr and I felt really comfortable on the bike (even though my lungs didn't!). I had an absolute blast! Thanks to the Taupo MTB Club!!!
Some other exciting bits and pieces from the rest of my week include:
* The discovery that the bridge between the Hemo Gorge track and Waipa Mill carpark has now being completed, making it a very feasible and more interesting route to the forest from town.
* Having my Italian buddy Matteo move here to Rotorua (that's right, the guy who managed my crew for 24 hour world champs)!
* Taking Matteo out to show him the trails with the dog and then spending more time looking for the lost dog in the forest than we actually spent riding trails (although I think Matteo was secretly pleased with the rest on the climb!)
* Enjoying a stunning afternoon road ride around the lakes, seeing my flatmate out and about and smiling and waving so that I looked like I was enjoying myself for all of 5 seconds whilst I smashed myself climbing the hill up Tarawera road.
* Giving away an awesome pair of Adidas Evil Eye sunglasses to Graeme Quay, one of our Yeti Tribe Gathering buddies who had the closest guess of how many metres I rode and climbed in this year's world champs (the correct answer is that I rode 287.95km and climbed 6923m!)
* Beating a bunch of personal best times on a whole heap of trails in the forest this week.
As I also eluded at the start of my post to the fact that I'm enjoying some new kit, and I am really stoked to announce that Endura Clothing have come on board as part of my team. I've been eying off their gear for a while now... The range of clothing they have, the fit and the quality are all huge bonus points for me... So I was quite stoked when Nigel touched base with me and invited me to come on board (thanks Nigel!). I'm really looking forward to giving the gear a thrashing and then reporting back to everyone on it... So far, though, my fav piece of gear is the Women's Singletrack baggy shorts...
Looking forward to a good weekend at the Taniwha! 80km of trails and hopefully some sunshine!
A quick warm up loop confirmed the tracks were running pretty fast, but the general consensus was that there was an apparent lack of any climbing of note. I've often had this debate with people who don't like climbing... That riding a trail that is devoid of climbs is actually much harder work, and today was no exception to this... We set off at race start and I punched out my first 12km lap in about 42 minutes... I was fast, but nowhere near fast enough to keep up with Fiona Macdermid. Open females were committed to 3 laps of the 12km course, which was quite long for a cross country race. The relative flatness of the course meant that I was on the hammer the whole time, and it showed in my data afterwards, where my average heart rate for the two hours sat within my anabolic threshold. But whilst the course was hard work, it was also great fun, and to be fair, it would not have done the course justice to ride it any slower. For the most part, we were negotiating our way through flowy corners and berms and floating over small flat top jumps. I worked hard, but I also had a great time, coming in second behind Fiona. For a trail that felt so flat, though, we still punched out a total of 750m of climbing!
I was actually really stoked with my ride... I smashed out a hard, fast 36km, with an average speed of 17km/hr and I felt really comfortable on the bike (even though my lungs didn't!). I had an absolute blast! Thanks to the Taupo MTB Club!!!
Some other exciting bits and pieces from the rest of my week include:
* The discovery that the bridge between the Hemo Gorge track and Waipa Mill carpark has now being completed, making it a very feasible and more interesting route to the forest from town.
* Having my Italian buddy Matteo move here to Rotorua (that's right, the guy who managed my crew for 24 hour world champs)!
* Taking Matteo out to show him the trails with the dog and then spending more time looking for the lost dog in the forest than we actually spent riding trails (although I think Matteo was secretly pleased with the rest on the climb!)
* Enjoying a stunning afternoon road ride around the lakes, seeing my flatmate out and about and smiling and waving so that I looked like I was enjoying myself for all of 5 seconds whilst I smashed myself climbing the hill up Tarawera road.
* Giving away an awesome pair of Adidas Evil Eye sunglasses to Graeme Quay, one of our Yeti Tribe Gathering buddies who had the closest guess of how many metres I rode and climbed in this year's world champs (the correct answer is that I rode 287.95km and climbed 6923m!)
* Beating a bunch of personal best times on a whole heap of trails in the forest this week.
As I also eluded at the start of my post to the fact that I'm enjoying some new kit, and I am really stoked to announce that Endura Clothing have come on board as part of my team. I've been eying off their gear for a while now... The range of clothing they have, the fit and the quality are all huge bonus points for me... So I was quite stoked when Nigel touched base with me and invited me to come on board (thanks Nigel!). I'm really looking forward to giving the gear a thrashing and then reporting back to everyone on it... So far, though, my fav piece of gear is the Women's Singletrack baggy shorts...
Looking forward to a good weekend at the Taniwha! 80km of trails and hopefully some sunshine!
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